The Foreword, the first words that the authors write in the revelation presented as The Urantia Book, differs from all other papers in the book in both purpose and design. Though it can be studied as if it’s just another paper, we should keep in mind that its primary purpose is to serve as a dictionary for the papers that follow.

In writing the Urantia papers, the revelators have to build on a foundation of words already existing in English—the language in which they have chosen to write—and those pre-existing terms have been defined and utilized in many different ways by philosophers and theologians through the centuries (0:0.2).

Therefore, at the very beginning of this new revelation the authors take a few pages to outline how they will adopt and adapt such existing terms for their purposes and occasionally coin new words if necessary. That’s what the Foreword does, and the reader will be well-served by making frequent use of it as the authors intended: as an introductory dictionary of terms which is organized topically rather than alphabetically.